Assault Gunners HD Edition (PC) review

On March 20, 2018 by Aaron Meehan

Originally released in Japan as a Vita-exclusive in 2012, Assault Gunners is finally getting a western release as Marvelous is publishing the HD edition of the game for PC and PlayStation 4. For those unaware, Assault Gunners HD Edition takes place on Mars where you and three AI teammates control mechs and attempt to stop terraforming robots that seemingly out of nowhere have become armed and hostile to all those around them.

Assault Gunners HD Edition is a game that screams average as nothing about the game really grabbed me. The five-hour long campaign is a succession of quick-fire rounds of killing all those around you and going to a specific spot on the map. With that said, the mech customisation, while limited was rather interesting.

In terms of story, you are a member of a peacekeeping force called DAT who has been sent to Mars after all communication with the planet was lost. Arriving on Mars as a member of a four-man team you quickly discover that something is terribly wrong as the robotic automated system, which was created to speed up the terraforming of Mars, has armed the robotic workers called ANTS. Now, as a member of a peacekeeping force, you need to defeat the swarms of ANTS and find out what caused them to simply attack everybody.

When it comes to its storytelling, Assault Gunners HD Edition decides to provide it via text crawls at the beginning of every mission, while it is not the best delivery method, it is better than the Japanese voiced cutscenes and com chatter that you cannot understand due to the lack of subtitles.

Moving onto the combat, players can quickly switch between four different weapon types, which are fist, shoulder, primary and secondary weapons. Unfortunately, combat while having the potential to be exciting flounders as the game offers no challenge, for example, at one point I decided to use my shotgun and run around the map constantly firing the gun, not only did I not run out of ammo, but I barely lost a sliver of health, and before anyone asks I did this on normal difficulty. In all honesty, the only challenging aspects of the combat is that boosting drains your shield gauge, and the boss battle difficulty ranges from so easy I blinked and killed it to why won’t you just die I shot you several hundred times.

As I said at the top of this review the mech customisation aspect of Assault Gunners HD Edition is the strongest aspect of the game. The customisation is similar to that of other games in the mech genre with the ability to change your play style with a large variety of body, leg, weapon and enhancement parts. Although, I did find that the customisation options made it very easy to make an overpowered mech. The one downside to the customisation option is the process of unlocking new parts, to gain a new part you must first find it during a mission, but before you can equip it you first need to research the part using development points, which are earned by completing missions. Personally, I would have loved to see the system work by allowing you to use the parts you found straightaway and keep the research aspect to upgrading the various parts of your mech.

Besides the story mode and mech customisation, Assault Gunners HD Edition also has “Inferno Mode”. This mode is essentially a survival mode where you and your AI teammates fight wave after wave of ever more powerful enemies until you are defeated. It’s a decent mode, but I feel there was a missed opportunity for a co-op multiplayer.

Now let’s move onto the issues with Assault Gunners HD Edition. Issues with the game primarily revolve around enemies popping in right in front of you -a visually unappealing problem- and the fact that if you play the game in borderless mode many of the game’s assets fail to rescale, these include the logo and control map.

In terms of graphics, Assault Gunners HD Edition has a nice cartoonish graphics style that while making the mechs look bulky was rather appealing to my eyes. As mentioned earlier in this review the audio is Japanese only with no English subtitles.

One of the issues with playing the game in borderless mode.

Conclusion

Assault Gunners HD Edition is an average mech shooter at best. While the customisation options were somewhat interesting, the game is let down by repetitive combat and a bland story.